


Alistair's Loss

by meyghasa



Category: Dragon Age Origins
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyghasa/pseuds/meyghasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt:  Can you explore Alistair’s thoughts in regards to Duncan’s death and how deeply it affects him (if at all)? Can you also show how he feels in regards to the other party members possibly not understanding the brevity (or lack thereof) of his loss?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alistair's Loss

Gone.  All of them were gone.  It didn’t feel real.  It _couldn’t_ be real.  The ogre had beat him up good and bashed his head into the stone, leaving him to dream up these two days of sitting in this damn cold forest with only mages for company.  Apostates, and, he suspected, a possible blood mage. 

That’s all it was.  Just a bad dream from a head injury.  He would be up and about and traveling with his comrades any day now, making jokes that made Duncan groan and roll his eyes.  They would sit around and tell stories and stuff their faces and be a family, because they _were_ his family, the only family that – sans Duncan – didn’t know about the stupid prince thing.  Any day now he would open his eyes and grin at Duncan’s worried expression.  _Takes more than a few darkspawn to kill me, Duncan._

Alistair’s head drooped forward and he hugged his knees closer to his chest.  The ground was cold, and that cold was slowly seeping through the leather of his trousers to numb him from the waist down.  If only it would similarly numb that twisting ache in his stomach.  That ache told him that despite his attempt at bravado, he wasn’t lying injured on the top of the Tower of Ishal.  He wasn’t dreaming.  They were gone.  The Grey Wardens, gone.  Duncan…

He squeezed his eyes tight, momentarily blocking out the twisted mess of the Wilds and the peripheral view he had of the old woman’s dilapidated hut.  He had barely spoken two words to her since waking up on the floor of the hut with the two of them, the woman and her freaky, freaky daughter, leaning over him and the smell of elfroot and blood in the air.  As soon as he could walk again he had wandered out to sit by the little mud-colored pond, and there he sat, lost in mourning and disbelief and guilt.

 _It should have been me._

He blamed _her_ , just a little bit.  Well, more than a little bit.  She had been at the meeting.  She had agreed to the stupid plan of them both going to the Tower.  If she had just spoken up, convinced Cailan to let him fight with Duncan, maybe Duncan would still be alive now.  Or maybe they would both be dead.  Maybe that would be okay.  He didn’t know anymore.  But she could have stopped it.  She didn’t even try.  When he protested to Duncan, she told him to stop whining.  He hated her a little bit, then.

It was her attitude.  Her… magey-ness.  He didn’t even care that she was an elf, except that she brought it up all the damn time.  He could maybe ignore the mage bit if she didn’t go on about mage rights constantly.  Mages belong in the Circle, period end of story.  Right?  Otherwise they would be free to… to… turn people into frogs all the time.  Or something.

She hadn’t even asked a single question about him when they met, except a snapped, “So you were a _mage-hunter?_ ” and a disdainful, “Do you really have to accompany me?”  Once she had found out about his Templar background, a gate closed behind her eyes.  He had meant it as a joke, _I don’t suppose you’re another mage_ , but the way she had curled her lip and glared, “Would that make your day worse?”, he knew they wouldn’t see eye-to-eye. 

And they hadn’t.  She killed that soldier in the Wilds!  Sweet Maker.  She had tormented poor Ser Jory, outdone them all in sheer bloodlust, and he swore that when Duncan was forced to kill Ser Jory during the Joining he had heard her mutter, “Serves the ignorant fool right.”  Ugh.  Crazy mage.  Just what they needed in the Wardens.

He desperately wished that focusing on her would make the empty feeling of loss go away.  It didn’t.

—-

“Ah, finally decided to rejoin us, have you?  Falling on your blade in grief seemed like too much trouble, I take it?”

Alanessa had smirked.  _Smirked._   She and Morrigan were growing to be a whole lot too buddy-buddy for Alistair’s taste.  Probably a mage thing.  Or a bitch thing.  They both fit into those categories awfully well.

A part of him – a big part of him – had wanted to walk away.  Let them handle the Blight if they were so blessed special.  Alanessa was a Warden now, so why not let her go save the world while he went north, maybe to the Free Marches, and got incredibly drunk for the next year or six? 

He almost did.  “Do you want to talk about Duncan?” she had asked, about a week after she had so brusquely snapped that she was fine, leave her alone, she wasn’t having any nightmares he needed to concern himself with.  It had surprised him, but not as much as the subsequent conversation had.

“You don’t have to do that.  I know you didn’t know him like I did.”

She had shrugged, looked away.  “I just thought you might need to talk about it.”

So he had.  Just a little.  He gave her a little glimpse into what life had been like with the Wardens, how Duncan had saved him from the Chantry, and she had listened.  Really listened.  It was the first spark of interest she had shown in anything he had to say that wasn’t directions on how to get to Redcliffe.  It felt good to talk about them, about Duncan.

“Every scar is a story,” she had said, unconsciously touching a spot on her forearm that he couldn’t see due to her robe’s long sleeve.  “This is just another scar.  It will linger, but eventually it won’t hurt.”

Huh.  For a moment, he had almost believed maybe he and Alanessa had just started out all wrong.  Maybe they weren’t so different.  He had thanked her, offered his customary smile. 

“Yes, well.  I just wanted to make sure you didn’t fall apart on me again.  Keep it together, or I’ll leave you behind.”

Bitch.

In the end, he had stayed because of Duncan.  Not that he would tell _them_ that.  Maker knew what fun barbs they would come up with on that occasion.  But he owed Duncan.  He owed the Grey Wardens.  They had taken him in, given him a home and a place and a family, saved him from a life spent hunting mages for the Chantry.  He wouldn’t dishonor their memory by abandoning what they had spent so much effort trying to fight.

So he stayed, and he fought, and he tried to ignore the hole in his heart that no one else saw or cared about.  He owed Duncan that.


End file.
